Liturgy Pacific is the on-line presence of Richard Geoffrey Leggett, Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver and Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies at Vancouver School of Theology. Here you will find sermons, comments on current Anglican and Lutheran affairs and reflections on the need for progressive orthodox Christians to re-claim our place on the theological stage.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

One Flock, One Shepherd: Unity not Uniformity (Easter 4B 26 April 2015)

Over
the past several months I have been in conversations where the topic of
retirement has been raised.For me there
is a degree of uncertainty given the changes in law, in our Diocese and in the
day-to-day realities of parish ministry.Depending on how these change combine at any given time, I could retire
in three years or four years or five years or eight years or --- never!

After
one of these conversations I found myself pondering the dreaded ‘L’ word ---
‘Legacy’.When the time comes and I
leave full-time paid ministry, what will I look back on with a degree of joy
and satisfaction?Many things have come
to mind, but four remain relatively high on the list:

i)Working for the restoration of the diaconate
as a full and equal ministry in the life of the Anglican churches in North
America;

ii)Being on the faculty of the first theological
college in North America to offer an accredited Master of Divinity for people
serving in aboriginal communities that seeks to respect aboriginal cultures and
ways of learning;

iii)Serving the cause of the full and visible
unity of the Christian Church by participating in the process that has brought
the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
into full communion; and

iv)Trying to help the Church receive gay and
lesbian Christian as full and equal disciples.

When
I look at this list, I realize that the last two have been received differently
in the wider world.Full communion
between Anglicans and Lutherans has generally been greeted with enthusiasm
although there are a few nay-sayers.The
same cannot be said of my participation in the struggle for the full inclusion
of gays and lesbians.Some people I know
have laid the responsibility for the current divisions between Anglicans
squarely at my feet and the feet of those who share my views.‘You have scattered the sheep,’ some have
said.

So,
what are we to make of Jesus’ words in today’s gospel?In all of the events that have occurred
during my life and during my time as an ordained minister of the Church, have
we followed the way of the good shepherd or the way of the hired hand?Have we gathered the sheep into ‘one flock’
or scattered them hither and yon?These
questions are never far from my mind.Yet, there is one more that is perhaps even more important.What does Jesus mean when he says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this
fold.I must bring them also, and they
will listen to my voice.So there will
be one flock, one shepherd.”? (John 10.16)

There
have been many answers given by Christian teachers and preachers to this
question.I won’t try to catalogue them
for you.But I will give you my own
‘take’ on the question.

For
whatever reason, human beings seem to have a built-in temptation to divide the
world into two categories:people who
are like ‘us’ and people who are not --- the ‘others’.This temptation causes us frequent discomfort
as we navigate the currents of our lives, especially when we come face to face
with someone who is ‘different’ from ‘us’.Through the prophet Micah, God has given us some guidelines for how to
navigate such turbulent waters.(Micah
6.8)

i)Do justice:Treat everyone with dignity and respect because everyone has been made
in the image of God.

ii)Love kindness:Care for every creature, human and non-human,
with compassion.

iii)Walk humbly with God:Dare to look for God even in those who differ
from us the most and to believe that God is act work in them just as surely as
God is at work in us.

And,
as if these guidelines were not enough, God sent, in the fullness of time,
Jesus of Nazareth in whom the Word of God, God’s very creative purpose, walks
among us.In his life and teaching Jesus
bears witness to God’s vision of the unity of all creation.In his letter to the Galatians Paul of Tarsus
gives a clear summary of this vision:“As
many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus.”(Galatians
3.27-28)

What
Jesus and his disciple Paul have taught us is this:Our differences, though real, are not silos
that are meant to keep the ‘other’ out and ourselves secure.They are signs of the wonder of God’s
creation.Just as each facet of a cut
diamond reflects the light and deepens the stone’s splendour, so too does the
diversity of humanity tell the wonder of God.

Unity,
as God has envisaged it and the Scriptures teach us, is not a uniformity based
upon conformity to a single facet of the diamond that is creation.Unity arises when, like the Good Shepherd, we
gather people into community, into communion with one another.Just as God gives God’s very self to us in
the eucharist, so do we give one another our very selves, the richness of our
identity, when we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God amidst the
wondrous variety of creation.

But
unity does come at a price.Moving
beyond tolerance of the ‘other’ into respect for the ‘other’ is not easy.Respect requires us to believe that the
‘other’ has an insight, a gift, a perspective on being human that we lack but
need in order to become more fully human ourselves.Unity may mean living with uncertainty as we
struggle together to discern how we inch closer to God’s future.And, from my own experience, working for
unity means risking the disapproval of one’s own community, even one’s own
family.

For
the sake of the unity of all people Jesus chose to lay down his life.For our unity God raised Jesus from the dead
so that we might know the fullness of life.May we, using the gifts God has given each of us, become shepherds who
gather God’s scattered and divided sheep together.There will be one flock, one shepherd, and
some of the flock will be white, yellow, black and brown and all colours in between.Some of the flock will want to drink from the
same spring as the others and some will be more picky.But only together will the flock know the One
in whose image they have been created and into whose future they are being led.

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About Me

Richard is a presbyter of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster with a number of responsibilities. He is Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver. Richard is also the Principal Consultant for Liturgy Pacific, a worship consultancy providing educational seminars and resources for congregational life and ministry. After 23 years as a member of the faculty of Vancouver School of Theology, Dr Leggett became Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies in 2010. Since 1989 Dr Leggett has served on various national committees of the Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran churches in Canada and is a regular participant in the work of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. From 2010 to 2016 he was a Member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada.